No restaurant? No problem for chefs braving the elements to build businesses based on farmers markets

Kathy Vega Hardy of Taste of the Philippines stirs a pot of pancit at her Daley Plaza farmers market booth. She is one of many Chicago chefs who rely on the farmers market circuit to make a living and establish themselves in Chicago’s thriving food scene. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

For Kathy Vega Hardy and her mobile restaurant business, A Taste of the Philippines, Thursdays are game days and kickoff is when her first alarm goes off at 2:30 a.m. She needs to be out the door by 3:30 so she can swing by her shared kitchen commissary, pick up the last of her supplies and dart over to Daley Plaza by 6:15 a.m. for the farmers market that opens at 7 a.m.

This morning, like most for chefs such as Hardy, is as much a high-wire act of timing and organization than cooking and shopping. If everything goes according to plan and the weather holds up, service will go smoothly and customers who stop by each week for her trademark lumpia and empanadas will return.

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She has a doubleheader on Thursdays: After Daley Plaza, she’ll stop in the South Loop to meet the after-work-crowd, adding a noodle-based pancit to the earlier menu. By the end of the 18-hour day, she’s exhausted and ready for bed. It’s just one day in the life of area chefs who rely on the farmers market circuit to make a living and establish themselves in Chicago’s thriving food scene.

Unlike brick-and-mortar restaurants with dedicated staffs, kitchens, storage and receiving areas for ingredients and deliveries, mobile chefs such as Hardy, Alexis Thomas of Black Cat Kitchen, Rachel Post of Our House Pizza, and Karl Bader of Karl’s Craft Soup, rely on leased spaces, detailed calendars and resolve to bring their dishes to market.

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“You have to enjoy logistics and problem solving,” Post said, “because it takes up most of your headspace on any given day. The second I wake up in the morning, I have the day planned down to the second. Nothing ever goes ‘smoothly’ and we roll with the punches.

“I would love to have everything under one roof: office, kitchen, storage, garage for the (pizza) oven. Right now, they are under three.”

Hardy’s challenge on Thursdays — with the help of her assistant, Chrizel Elazegui — is setting up, cooking and selling breakfast and lunch, then shutting down and moving operations to do it all over again for the dinner crowd.

Kathy Hardy high fives a customer after serving her at her Taste of the Philippines booth at the Daley Plaza farmers market. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

While she also caters private events and Kamayan-style dinners, Hardy’s market dishes are traditional street food, rooted in her mother’s cooking. Lumpia (spring rolls), pancit (pan-fried noodles) and empanadas are popular; lechon kawali (crisp pork belly) and breakfast lumpia (filled with bacon, egg and cheese) have been recent additions. With cooperative weather, she can sell more than 200 plates a week of hand-rolled lumpia filled with seasoned pork, cabbage, carrots, garlic and onion. It’s her runaway best-seller, and some days she sells out of food before the lunch rush is over.

Hardy, who was born in the Philippines and raised downstate in Springfield prepares throughout the week for the market. On Monday and Tuesdays, she scouts weather forecasts, creates menus, shops, reserves space at commercial kitchens and secures staffing. Wednesday is prep day: She chops and preps vegetables, seasons and cooks meat, and blends sauces. It’s the last call before kickoff Thursday morning.

For Hardy, 36, who also has a 7-month-old daughter and is training for a half-marathon, all it can take is one ill-timed delay and the whole week can be thrown into disarray.

“It’s a domino effect,” she said.

Wrapping lumpia is a feat in itself. On a good day at the markets, Hardy said she needs 600 to 700 — and if she’s catering during the weekend, she may need to wrap well over 1,000.

To stick to her tight timeline, booking time at a commercial kitchen is critical. Hardy schedules three- or four-hour blocks on Wednesdays, seven to 10 days in advance, and relies on use of the kitchen at Second Presbyterian Church to prepare pancit before the South Loop stop.

“I tell my husband, ‘Man, I miss my truck,’” said Hardy, who ran a successful food truck in Denver before moving to Chicago in 2012 and has competed on two Food Network cooking shows, “Chopped” and “Cutthroat Kitchen.” “It was way easier in the truck, because I could work by myself.”

And then there is the challenge of transporting ingredients, supplies, tent and tables from site to site. Hardy upgraded to a van to streamline it all. Inside, she stuffs a tent, two-tier cart, three tackles, shelves, chafing racks and four collapsible coolers that keep food cold and ready for frying.

“I have to bring everything for both markets,“ Hardy said. “It’s a total Tetris act.“

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So, why take this route?

Post started Our House Pizza in 2015 after working at Floriole, Hoosier Mama and Vella Cafe — all run by women who used the farmers market model to build a loyal client base. Post baked breads and pizzas at Floriole before branching out on her own.

“It was hard to leave (Floriole), because I was very much at home there,” she said. “But I was outgrowing my position and it was time for the new talent to step in and do something awesome.”

The main attraction at Our House Pizza is the mobile, stone-hearth oven that can reach 900 degrees, bake pies in a few minutes and maintain the dough’s light and pillowy texture. Seasonal menus vary but mainstays include the classic red with mozzarella, fresh garlic and thyme; breakfast pizza with egg and meats; cottage veggie; and special white.

Our House Pizza has a station at the Lincoln Square Farmers Market on Thursday nights and at Green City Market on Saturdays. The prep schedule for Post and her team starts with the dough on Monday and Tuesday. Orders for flour, cheese and wood for the oven need to be coordinated; fresh produce needs to be acquired from vendors or farmers markets; and, with a handful of staff members, there’s administrative work. Post also leases space and storage at a commercial kitchen.

Even the pizza oven has its own schedule. It can take two hours for it to reach prime baking temperature — longer in the fall — so arriving onsite on time is essential. That’s no easy task when factoring in summer road construction in Chicago.

“When I’ve worked in restaurants, you’re mainly thinking about the menu and how to build a dish, what’s in season, what’s a new hot ingredient or technique you want to showcase. We have to do all that, but also build a kitchen for outside service and have a contingency plan in case there’s a rainstorm, wind or extreme heat and humidity,” Post said. “The other issue is getting numbers right. We never want to sell out too early or have tons of product left over. We only have so much room to bring and store everything.

“This may sound like complaining, but I really do love it. I love working outside, cooking outside is the greatest. I hated being in kitchens 12 to 15 hours with florescent lights, no windows and four walls.”

While she calls the process “grueling,” it fits her comfort zone.

“A restaurant has this romantic feel on paper,” she said. “I can romance myself with the idea of a restaurant, but have been on the opening and managing of many, and it’s not something I think of as a good investment long-term for me.”

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To own or not own a restaurant

Bader owned a restaurant before moving into the catering and farmers market scene. At S3 Kitchen in Oak Park, he explored his passion for soups and catered to the lunch crowd, but later closed up shop to focus on catering and work as a personal chef. When demand for his soups from frequent customers grew big enough, he decided to work the indoor and outdoor markets in Chicago and sell through select area grocery stores. Now, it’s his lifeline.

“The business model works incredibly well for me,” he said. “I have very low overhead, the ability to flex staff time according to demand, and a near guaranteed flow of traffic. The flexibility gives me more freedom to build the business with catering, retail sales and pop-up events.”

Bader uses space at Sugar Beet Schoolhouse, a shared facility in River Forest with a 600-square-foot commercial-grade kitchen. That’s where Bader prepares, at peak output, up to 1,500 bowls of soup a week. Thai-carrot-and-corn and tomato-zucchini-rosemary soups are the most popular, but recent varieties included chilled potato, summer squash and chive, and Moroccan chickpea.

“There’s nothing more energizing as a chef than being surrounded by other talented artisans,” said Bader who has booths at markets in Logan Square (Sunday), Andersonville (Wednesday) and Hyde Park (Thursday). “So while for many food artists, the promise of a brick-and-mortar establishment is the prize, for me, it was the exactly the opposite.”

Thomas, of Black Cat Kitchen, calls owning her own restaurant “definitely the ultimate goal.” She started working one market a week in January 2018, landed a few catering jobs, and since then has built her business into a full-time endeavor serving three markets a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays in Lincoln Square, Wednesdays in Andersonville.

Thomas’ fare focuses on health-conscious, grab-and-go entrees using locally sourced ingredients. Past menus have included the Fat Adam, a fried-egg sandwich with prosciutto, melted gouda and sriracha mayo on an English muffin, and the Buffalo Blue Bowl, a bed of greens topped with spicy Buffalo chickpeas, chipotle corn and smoked-blue-cheese dressing. She also offers several takes on sourdough grilled cheeses.

“It’s a lot like camping. If you forget an important ingredient or run out of propane half way through a market, you can’t necessarily run to Restaurant Depot to restock.”

Back at Daley Plaza, Hardy said she hopes to transform A Taste of the Philippines into a food-hall location and maybe even a stand-alone restaurant someday. But for now, she’s building a following through catering after a stint in the competitive food arena.

“Moving to Chicago made me a better chef,” she said. “It’s a whole different ball game. Chicago is such a foodie city. ... Now I’m more self-conscious about the food. I’m more aware. There’s a lot more at stake here; there’s more competition.”